Who Saved Watt?!

What do you do when you’ve got millions of dollars in the bank and you really believe in being green? You buy a rainforest, naturally!

Johan Eliasch, 43, an English businessman, bought over 400,000 acres in the heart of the Amazon jungle. He bought the land from a timber company to proctect the plants and wildlife, and he’s invited scientists to come do research in his bit of the Amazon.

What I find interesting is his role as Deputy Treasurer of Britain’s Conservative party. Imagine that, a political conservative who actually wants to conserve things! This is not, on the face of things, the state of affairs in the U.S., unfortunately.

To be fair, there are some political conservatives who are also conservation minded. Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina, for example, is a Republican with a sound environmental record. I’m certain there are others like him, but the vocal minority of political conservatives in the U.S. drown out their moderate brethren. What we hear is “guns, God, and gays” as being important to the conservative base, but this is not a fair representation of the entire political landscape. It just happens to be the loudest.

One is stodgy and ancient technology. The other is sleek and efficient. One is yesterday’s news. The other is at the center of a revolution solving many of the challenges we face. Climbing energy consumption, rising gasoline costs and electric bills, greenhouse gases, and dependence on foreign oil.

The compact flourescent light bulb (CFL for short) uses just 25% of the energy of the old incandescent light bulb. In America alone, we consume over 100 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) on lighting! At an average cost of $0.11 per kWh, that’s over $11 billion!

Consider this: If all of America’s 107 million households swapped just one 60 watt incandescent bulb that runs for 4 hours a day for a CFL, we would save 19.26 billion watts of electricity. How can that be? A 60 watt equivalent CFL only uses 15 watts of electricity. Do the math. It adds up fast, and it’s all money in your pocket. Compact flourescent light bulbs will save you money on your electricty bill and reduce your average energy consumption.  It’s good for your environment, too.

The new thing	Yesterday’s has-been